Photos Courtesy of Tuff Kids
Photos Courtesy of Tuff Kids
Volunteers united to begin work on the TUFF Kids Community Youth Center over the weekend. The building has a rich history as it was a Masonic Lodge for 70 years. The building had been abandoned since the organization disbanded over 12 years ago, but all previous members re-established the lodge to have one last meeting to vote on giving the building to TUFF Kids. They then met at the office of Jennifer Bergman, prior to becoming Liberty County District Attorney, to sign over the building.
Now there are high hopes to breathe new life into the structure and the surrounding community. Volunteers from across the area joined to take the building “down to the studs” in order to begin the journey of remodeling the facility. There is much work yet to be done, but the process has started. TUFF Kids has also acquired the lots adjacent to the building.
“Easily I drew some sketches that became the final painting Exodus,” said Richardson.
The piece is loosely inspired by The Flight into Egypt, a pencil drawing by French Realist Jean-Francois Millet. Like her painting for the Fence Art Project, Millet’s Flight features two people intimately connected, something which immediately stood out to Richardson when she first saw it during a lecture on the video meeting app Zoom. But it was the way that a more well-known artist was impacted by Millet’s images that really influenced the Savannahian in her own work.
“[Vincent] Van Gogh only saw black and white reproductions of [Millet’s] work because of the limitations of printing in the 19th century,” Richardson recounted. “Instead, he would do what he called ‘color translations.’”
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